1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and program for providing data updates to a page including multiple regions of dynamic content.
2. Description of the Related Art
A web browser program may download and display a web page, such as a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), etc., from a server using the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The web page may include dynamic content that is gathered from a database or other application program at the server end. In cases where the dynamic content is frequently changing, the web browser will periodically request further data from the server. In the current art, a web page including dynamic content that needs to be periodically refreshed would include a META-REFRESH tag in the web page to cause the client web browser to automatically submit additional HTTP GET requests at specified time intervals to refresh the content of in the displayed web page and update the dynamic content.
Many web pages may include multiple HTML frames including different sections of dynamic content that may change at the server at different rates. In the current art, there would be one META-REFRESH tag included in each separate frame to update dynamic data even if the dynamic content in certain frames or sections of the page has not changed. Thus, a separate frame update request is generated for each frame to refresh the data. This current art refresh technique unnecessarily increases network bandwidth and server load by updating dynamic content in the frames that may have not changed. The cumulative effect on network bandwidth and server load of numerous web browsers automatically refreshing each frame in the page when the dynamic content has not changed may be significant. The stress on network bandwidth and server load further increases as additional frames of dynamic content are included in a single web page requiring additional refresh requests and as the number of users accessing such web page increases.
For these reasons, there is a need in the art for an improved technique for updating pages rendered in viewer programs that include dynamic content.